Baked french toast

I made breakfast this morning.  And it wasn't merely edible, either, it was good!  Everyone had seconds, even Ari.  We used up the challah thanks to imaonthebima's recipe:

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
3 tablespoons honey (I don't measure. I just squeeze it in the pan.)
2/3 cup orange juice (or milk if you don't have any)
4 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon (who measures?)
1/4 teaspoon salt
glug of vanilla
6 (1/2- to 3/4-inch) thick slices of Challah

Heat oven to 375.
Spray a 9x13 glass baking dish with cooking spray and then put butter and honey into then pan. Heat in oven until butter melts and honey is bubbling, about 8 minutes. Remove from oven and stir well.
While it's heating, in a large wide pan, whisk together juice, eggs, spices, and salt. Dip bread in, turning it once to coat it well, let it soak about 2 minutes per side, then carefully set each piece of bread into the honey-buttered pan. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until well-browned. Before serving, flip over each piece so the honey-butter side is up.


It smells and tastes amazing.



The funny part is, as I read "who measures" I look down at myself... holding a measuring spoon full of cinnamon.  Well, so I'm not at the "just dump it in" stage yet... but it still tasted fantastic!

In honor of Ari's birthday

Ari turned one on the 28th!  And I didn't blog about it.  It was a very humdrum day, truth be told.  I did take a video of him though, for posterity.  He's very conversational, as you can see, albeit a bit frustrated in his makeshift jail:

Also, because this marvelous child is a full year old, I want to share this piece of writing, called "The Way" of parenting.  If I can follow this, I'll be the parent I want to be.  (I found at this site, but it's credited to someone named Leo Babauta)

The Way

The Way is only learned by walking it. Here are the steps I recommend:

• Greet your child each morning with a smile, a hug, a loving Good Morning! This is how we would all like to be greeted each day.
• Teach your child to make her own breakfast. This starts for most children at around the age of 3 or 4. Teach them progressively to brush their teeth, bathe themselves, clean up their rooms, put away clothes, wash their dishes, make lunch, wash their own clothes, sweep and clean, etc.
• Teaching these skills takes patience. Kids suck at them at first, so you have to show them about a hundred times, but let them try it, correct them, and let them make mistakes. They will gradually learn independence as you will gradually have less work to do caring for them.
• Know that when you screw up as a parent, everything will be fine. Forgive yourself. Apologize. Learn from that screw up. In other words, model the behavior you’d like your child to learn whenever he screws up.
• Older children can help younger children — it’s good for them to learn responsibility, it helps the younger children learn from the older ones, and it takes some of the stress off you.
• Read to them often. It’s a wonderful way to bond, to educate, to explore imaginary worlds.
• Build forts with them. Play hide and seek. Shoot each other with Nerf dart guns. Have tea together. Squeeze lemons and make lemonade. Play, often, as play is the essence of childhood.Don’t try to force them to stop playing.
• When your child asks for your attention, grant it.
• Parents need alone time, though. Set certain traditions so that you’ll have time to work on your own, or have mommy and daddy time in the evening, when your child can do things on her own.
• When your child is upset, put yourself in his shoes. Don’t just judge the behavior (yes, crying and screaming isn’t ideal), but the needs behind the behavior. Does he need a hug, or attention, or maybe he’s just tired?
• Model the behavior you want your child to learn. Don’t yell at the child because he was screaming. Don’t get angry at a child for losing his temper. Don’t get mad at a kid who wants to play video games all the time if you’re always on your laptop. Be calm, smile, be kind, go outdoors and be active.
• When a stressful time arises (and it will), learn to deal with it with a smile. Make a joke, turn it into a game, laugh … you’ll teach your child not to take things so seriously, and that life is to be enjoyed. Breathe, walk away if you’ve lost your temper, and come back when you can smile.
• Remember that your child is a gift. She won’t be a child for long, and so your time with her is fleeting. Every moment you can spend with her is a miracle, and you should savor it. Enjoy it to the fullest, and be grateful for that moment.
• Let your child share your interests. Bake cookies together. Sew together. Exercise together. Read together. Work on a website together. Write a blog together.
• Patiently teach your child the boundaries of behavior. There should be boundaries — what’s acceptable and what’s not. It’s not OK to do things that might harm yourself or others. We should treat each other with kindness and respect. Those aren’t things the child learns immediately, so have patience, but set the boundaries. Within those boundaries, allow lots of freedom.
• Give your child some space. Parents too often overschedule their child’s life, with classes and sports and play dates and music and clubs and the like, but it’s a constant source of stress for both child and parent to keep this schedule going. Let the child go outside and play. Free time is necessary. You don’t always have to be by her side either — she needs alone time just as much as you do.
• Exercise to cope with stress. A run in solitude is a lovely thing. Get a massage now and then.
• It helps tremendously to be a parenting team — one parent can take over when the other gets stressed. When one parent starts to lose his temper, the other should be a calming force.
• Mom and dad need a date night every week or so. Get a babysitter, or better yet, teach the older kids to babysit.
• Sing and dance together.
• Take every opportunity to teach kindness and love. It’s the best lesson.
• Kiss your child goodnight. And give thanks for another amazing day with your beautiful, unique, crazy child.

AMEN.

Winding... up?

You know, you'd think that with placement over, things would be winding down in our house.  But no.  Instead, it's a whole new set of (wonderful) issues.  Jonathan's currently working on the rental lease for our soon-to-be tenants when we move out.  We've made reservations for him to go to Sacramento to look for a place to live.  We've finalized moving plans, and know who/when/where will be leaving.  We're sorting through material objects and donating things we don't want to take with us.  And in between, I've actually had an awful lot of writing to do... my senior sermon, my "ordination biography" to be put in the ordination service booklet, two essay contest entries.  Plus work and children, of course. :)

The weather has been so beautiful that we've been spending lots of time outside.  The kids and I had a playdate in the park on Saturday, which was lovely.  On Sunday the kids and I went to the JCC for a viewing of "Shalom Sesame"'s Passover special (think Grover in Israel).  They also had a fire truck outside and inflatables (the official term for fancy bounce houses), so Xander was over the moon.  Afterwards we went to McDonald's with Xander's friend Brian and his mother.  She made my day when she told me, again, how much she enjoyed December's Hanukkah party.  "It was so educational," she said, "and the baked goods!  It was all homemade.  You outdid Martha Stewart!"  I then had to tell her that as much as I wanted to take credit, it was JONATHAN who outdid Martha Stewart.  And it was even funnier because he wasn't with us that whole morning.  Guess where he was?  

The kitchen.  

A friend of ours is a professional baker, and while the kids and I were out Jonathan arranged for her to come over and show him how to make challah.  They had a great time, and best of all, the house smelled fantastic!  

Three braids on the left, six braids on the right.

Close-up, because it was just so pretty!  We've eaten one challah so far, and I have to admit, it's probably the best loaf I've ever tasted.

Oh!  Good news for me I can share.  I'm in academic awe of this one scholar, Tal Ilan.  She writes in my area of interest exactly, and I used five (six?) of her books in my thesis bibliography.  Well, I decided to cold-call her (cold-email, really), and I wrote her a fan letter, telling her all about how I admire her work and giving her a quick and dirty summary of my thesis.  She wrote back and we've struck up a correspondence!  And the best part: she's the editor of a scholarly journal, and told me that if I wanted to condense part of my thesis into an article, she'd consider it for publication!  Cool, huh?  It's gonna take me a while to fix it up, but I'm really excited by the possibility.

In honor of writing, you should click on this: an NPR article on what Shakespeare's works would have sounded like in his day.  The article has links to audio files, the accent is amazing.  It's like a blend of all British accents that I know, and the written words actually rhyme when it's said the way it's supposed to be.


And I shall close with pictures of downtime.  Here Simcha was the focus of the cuddles:

Xander using him as a pillow while Ari laughs.

Ari giving him his version of a hug while Xander strokes/pulls his tail.  Ari likes the cats so much better than Xander does, you can tell already.

The look on Simcha's face says it all.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

The good: Growing up.  Taking laundry out of the dryer, I noticed a ton of little pebbles in the lint filter.  "Baby rocks, Mommy!" Xander explained, his face lighting up.  Ari now too plays with cars, pushing vehicles pointedly across the floor.

The bad:  Growing up.  We got our first "bad" report from preschool.  Xander made another kid cry!  Apparently he wanted the other kid's toy, so took it.  Then he hit him.  And he got put on time-out for something else later that day.  Sigh.  But the teacher was so nice, she said, "Eh, we all have bad days. He's so sweet usually!"  So we felt better.

The ugly:  The fact that Passover (Pesach in Hebrew) starts in two weeks, and we're not near prepared!  As a reminder, it's the story of Exodus.  Here is a beautiful rendition of the tale as told through shadow light.  Link courtesy of Sylvan, thank you!

Shabbat shalom! 

Adulthood, through a child's eyes

Xander got up today and didn't immediately come into my and Jonathan's room.  Instead, he went to the bathroom and then played quietly by himself for about a half-hour.  When he did come in, he told us all about it.

"I'm so proud of you!" I said.  "Going potty by yourself and playing so nicely with your dinosaur!  Good job, Xander."

"Yeah!" he responded. "I'm just like a grown-up!"

Children, chocolate, and books. A good life.

So many wonderful things in the past week, where to start?

Perhaps, it should be at the very beginning.  Last week, even:

Xander at the dentist.  He cleaned the alligator's teeth using all the dentistry gadgets, and so wasn't scared at all when the dentist used them on him.

Second, Ari has been a huge cuddle-bug lately.  Who knows why.  Teething, growth spurt, change of weather?  All I know is, we're enjoying it.  Jonathan took this series of pictures while I was at work.

Pre-nap, pooped out.

Deeply asleep next to Simcha, with both of them between and over Jonathan's legs.  Jonathan called me, saying "I can't move!  What do I do?!"  He had no choice but to relax and enjoy.  

Waking up from nap an hour later.

Third, more birthday festivities!  On Thursday eight women friends and I went to "Ladies' Night Out" at The Melting Pot, a fondue restaurant.  It began with cheese fondue and dippers, then salad, then chocolate fondue.  But it wasn't just "cheese" and "chocolate"; everything had multiple ingredients and tasted fantastic. E.g. the picture below is of the server making the smore's fondue.  I forget what's in it, but oh it was delicious!

Also, I read an actual book on my day off on Friday!  Woohoo!  I still like to read books before I see the movies, and Jonathan knew that Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was nominated for Best Picture.  So he got the book for me as a birthday gift last week.  I liked it.  Some parts of it were trite, and the narrator did not act like a 9 year old boy (oftentimes it was easy to remember that the author was 28), but it was still good overall.  I will admit though, I've been haunted more by the TV show I'm now addicted to, United States of Tara, rather than the former book.  Toni Collette is utterly amazing playing a woman with dissasociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personalities).  The character has seven distinct personalities and Ms. Collette plays them to a tee; you honestly forget that it's one actress.

Saturday day was St. Patrick's Day, so of course we celebrated.  Xander refused my offer of green eggs, but both kids liked all the body art (stickers and fake tattoos) that Jonathan brought home.  To whit:

Saturday night Nancy came over to babysit and Jonathan and I went on DATE NIGHT!  Hallelujah.  It was so needed.  We went to dinner and a movie and everything.  I had forgotten what that was like.

I shall close with a video of a favorite family pasttime: singing.  I started by singing the ABC's to Ari, and then Xander took off with the tune.  The first song is made up with his own "lyrics"; this one was about exvacators, but the one before I started videotaping was about Purim and "Haman the mean guy."

And THAT was our week.

My birthday!

 

It was a birthday weekend, really - it started out with a chocolate card, chocolate-dipped strawberries, and flowers from Gwen and Sylvan, and a gift card for yummy treats from Mom.  

On Sunday we went to the Celtic festival at the Museum Center, which was awesome.  There were booths for vendors, artisan booths, bagpipers and Irish dancers, everything Celtic you could think of. The best part was when we saw the children's dance performance.  I learned from the woman introducing the kids that Irish/Scottish dancing was originally performed by men before battle, when they would wear heavy armor on their chests, and kilts.  That explains why the dancing is so straight-backed, and mostly involves leg movement.  It's the precursor to both ballet and square dancing.  Anyway, at the very end of the performance, the woman asked for volunteers, and she "taught" a simple dance to the kidlets.  Behold our tiny Scottish dancer.  He had so much fun!

Monday itself, my actual birthday, I went to HUC for a community lunch, and brought Ari along with.  Nothing like good socializing!

                                              

Jill, Daria, myself and Ari in the baby corner.

Note Daria's hand placement.  Apparently it's a shidduch!  (match)

Ari was so tired from all his womanizing that he got grumpy.  About six people passed him around, but he only started to fade when Danyul held him:

 

Then they both fell asleep.

After I woke up Ari, we came home and I RELAXED.  It was glorious.  I checked out my Facebook page and saw all the lovely messages.  Then I cracked up repeatedly at the creativity of Rachael J., who wished me happy birthday in every medium possible: in person at school, with a phone call, on Facebook, in a text message, email, and a blog comment.  

At around 5, Jonathan and I picked up Xander and we got my favorite take-out (yay Greek salad!).   Then after kidlet bedtime, I got to read!  Not just Feminist Harry Potter, but a few more articles in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine.  Do NOT laugh, it was honestly really enjoyable!

The day ended with a glass of wine and more chocolate.  You can't get any better than that!   

Books need a long attention span

Which I don't really seem to have.  But I've been reading a lot of articles lately.  Out of the many from the past few two days, here are two I found exceptionally interesting:

"Pass the Books. Hold the Oil" by Thomas Friedman, in the NY Times.  Basically, our children are our most precious resource.  And countries without natural resources, have better educated kids.  Hmm.

And "6 Things You Don't Know About a Special Needs Parent," by Maria Lin.  My kids aren't special needs, but I've gotten very interested in the subject because 1) It's always good to learn about children and 2) My new job as educator will encompass children with all sorts of issues, and I'm doing research.  The article was extremely touching.  One comment in particular made me do an internal double take:


As for the... comment [during pregnancy], "as long as it's healthy," I hear a lot of pregnant women say this. Don't get me wrong, I understand and share their wishes for healthy babies in every birth, but it's become such a thoughtless mantra during pregnancy that it can feel like a wish against what my son is. "And what if it's not healthy?" I want to ask. (My response: you will be OK. You and your child will still have a great, great life.)



That makes such sense.  And I said that all the time when I was pregnant, both times, to everyone, possibly including to my friend who has an autistic son.  Lin's perspective shocked me in its simplicity: it was a paradigm shift, and it made realize that as much as I try, special needs is often not on my radar in a way that matters.  And it needs to be, not just for myself, but for society in general.

Anyway, just food for thought.

Belated Purim

These pictures are a week old, from last Sunday's carnival:

Anatomy of a sponge toss, part 1.  (He had been wearing his fire-fighter's costume, but got too hot so took off everything but the boots.)

Part 2. 

Part 3.

And score!  

Getting his cheek painted: he requested a pink car.

During the cake walk.

Little lion smirk.

I love how he reaches for the camera on this one.

What we came home to.

What else has been going on?  I've been part of the rabbinical admissions committee, which has been revitalizing.  We have some great incoming rabbinical students this year!  I'm still working about 25 hours a week at the AJA.  We've been going to one birthday party a week, it seems, for kids in Xander's class who are turning 4.  Ari can now cruise along on all the furniture, and stand by himself for 2-3 seconds before falling down.  And scarily enough... we're starting to make plans to move to CA in June!

The tooth fairy... is not here.

We took Xander to the dentist for the first time today.  She was wonderful, was extremely patient with him, and even managed to scrape his teeth clean before he got fussy.  He has perfect teeth, she told me. I was gratified, but told her that I often felt guilty, because we usually only end up brushing his teeth at night.  He hates it, and we're usually out of time to argue with him in the morning, too.

Her response?

That we're in the top tier of parents.  That a large percentage of parents don't even brush their kids' teeth at all at this age.  And that I shouldn't worry, because obviously he's doing fine.  She also mentioned a front-page New York Times article that came out this week about the rise of preschool cavities.  I found it online now, when both kids are napping.  It's shocking!!  PRESCHOOLERS needing surgery?  I was appalled.

As luck would have it, this is the week of teeth.  Simcha had a tooth pulled yesterday at the vet, and he has to go in on Tuesday for dental surgery.  Poor kitty cat!  At least I can take no responsibility for him.  The vet said it was just his natural teeth, and that some cats have more trouble than others.

At least my dentist visit isn't for another few months...

Things to read

Article: 
"Apologies To The Parents I Judged Four Years Ago" by Kara Gebhart Uhl

Non-fiction book:
Beyond the Sling: A Real-Life Guide to Raising Confident, Loving Children the Attachment Parenting Way by Mayim Bialik.  Why do I love her?  From the amazon.com description:

Mayim Bialik is perhaps best known for her lead role as Blossom Russo in the early-1990s NBC television sitcom Blossom, and she currently stars on the top-rated comedy The Big Bang Theory. Bialik earned a B.S. from UCLA in 2000 in Neuroscience and Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UCLA in 2007. She designed a Neuroscience curriculum for homeschoolers in Southern California, where she also teaches biology, chemistry, and piano to middle and high school students. Married to her college sweetheart with two young sons, Bialik is also a Certified Lactation Education Counselor.

Fiction book:  
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  I actually read it out loud to Jonathan, a chapter a night, til we finished.  It was the family book!  Again from Amazon:

At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, READY PLAYER ONE is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut—part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.


Video to watch: 

Hogwarts Purim!

A real conversation

Almost every night, Ari goes to bed a little earlier than Xander.  Every night Xander gives Ari a kiss on the cheek (or the head, or the foot), and says, "lilah tov, Ari!"  (good night in Hebrew)

Last night, he said lilah tov as usual, and Ari said "lala."  Xander lit up and told him, "lililililililililah tov!"  Ari said back, "lililili!"  They did that twice in a row, so I know it wasn't a fluke.  Ari was actually talking to him!  By the end both were giggling, and it felt like they shared a brotherly connection that neither Jonathan nor I were part of. 

How fantastic!

How to potty train a 3 year old (for real, no joke)

1) Wait til they're ready. If you want it and they don't, there's no point.

2) Introduce them to a cousin/friend/classmate their age who's already potty-trained.  Peer pressure works!

3) Find what your kid cares about.  For us, we had to give up on sticker charts. Stickers mean nothing. M&Ms, on the other hand, work wonders.  One M&M per potty visit = multiple voluntary visits per day.

4) Have them pick out their own underwear.  For us, Thomas the Train big boy underwear is AMAZING.

5) And lastly... I hate to say it, but the clincher has been unabashed bribery.  Buy a fancy new toy (in our case, a front loader with moving mechanical parts).  Put it in a place of prestige (in our case, on the fireplace mantle), still in its box, as incentive.  Make criteria (of days without accidents, number of times on the potty, etc), and stick to it before giving the reward.

Xander really wants the front loader.  And he loves his underwear.  In three days with no diapers - even at nap and bedtime - only two accidents!  He even got up twice in the middle of the night last night to tell us he needed to go.

Thank you, universe.

Purim and other random kidlet pictures

Purim is on Wednesday, so of course, this means baking!  

I tried to get into a conversation with Xander about the meaning of the holiday:  

Me: "Xander, remind me again why we make hamantaschen on Purim?"

Him (thinking hard):  "Well... it's Purim.  We always make hamantaschen on Purim!"

I love kid logic.

Contemplating fillings.

Smiles.

Full context.

The next day, hanging out in Jonathan's office...

So happy to play.

Just chillin' with the office chair.

Say WHAT?

Where'd the kitty cat go?

No WAY, I didn't know that!

Hmm....

My work here is done.

At an indoor (unheated) play place for Xander's classmate's birthday.

And this I love, from Lynn K. upon seeing my contract with Ari:

Lovely mistake of the day

A librarian just complimented me on my forthcoming Ph.D.  I asked her what she meant.  Apparently another librarian had shared with her that I was done with my thesis, and she thought that meant I had just finished my dissertation.  All these years she's thought I was a Ph.D. student!  

"You're in the rabbinical program?!  But... we NEVER see rabbinic students studying in here like you do."

I didn't quite know what to say.  Umm.. I'm a geeky academic rabbinical student?

She was more than a little embarrassed, I could tell.  But I was actually pretty flattered. :)